Auckland from above, photographed from the International Space Station.
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Scott Kelly had one hell of a year in Space but now it’s time to come home.
Kelly’s closest USA contender trails him by 125 days.
And touchdown! Welcome home @StationCDRKelly, officially back on Earth after spending a #YearInSpace.
The live coverage starts right here at 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko hitched a ride back on Russia’s Soyuz rocket.
“When you go up in space there’s no gravity, so all this fluid shifts upward towards the head and it causes a number of issues for astronauts”, said Brinda Rana, a molecular geneticist at UC San Diego who is involved in two of the 10 research projects. From left are, Yuri Malenchenko, Tim Kopra, Mikhail Kornienko, Sergey Volkov, Scott Kelly and Tim Peake.
But the long stay has also been lonely.
Kelly posted one last batch of sunrise photos Tuesday on Twitter, before quipping, “I gotta go!”
Rana added that the knowledge gained from the twin studies will also have medical applications on Earth.
Yet he said he could hold out another year in the “harsh environment” of space – where nothing ever feels normal – if he had to. This is a human effect. “If we can dream it, we can make it so”, he said.
The agency will analyze the samples closely and try to determine which of Kelly’s health changes were a result of living in space and which were induced by genetic predisposition.
A view of the food table located in the Russian Zvezda service module on the International Space Station, April 8, 2015. “It’s an incredible science facility we have, it’s a privilege to fly here and it’s something I hope more people will have the opportunity to do in the future”.
But for Kelly, the challenge is the point of the whole endeavor.
The most harmless of microgravity’s effects also seems to be the most visible, she added – astronauts’ faces look puffy in space. “It’s kind of like I’ve been in the woods camping for a year”, astronaut Scott Kelly said during a news conference late last week.
Soon Kelly will be headed back to Houston, Texas, where he will continue to undergo testing for the One-Year Mission.
“Essentially there are specific dates where the station and therefore the Soyuz will cross over specific parts of the Earth (Kazakhstan) which allow you to line up for the usual landing and recovery zones”, Huot told Mashable via email.
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But did he really get taller than his brother?
